If you, who long have breathed the fumes Of city fogs and crowded rooms, Do now solicitously shun The cooler air and dazzling sun; If his majestic eye you flee, Learn hence t' excuse and pity me. Consider what it is to bear The powder'd courtier's witty sneer; To see th' important man of dress Scoffing my college awkwardness; To be the strutting cornet's sport, To run the gauntlet of the court, Winning my way by slow approaches, Through crowds of coxcombs and of coaches, From the first fierce cockaded sentry, Quite through the tribe of waiting gentry; To pass so many crowded stages, And stand the staring of your pages: And after all, to crown my spleen, Be told--'You are not to be seen:' Or, if you are, be forced to bear The awe of your majestic air. And can I then be faulty found, In dreading this vexatious round? Can it be strange, if I eschew A scene so glorious and so new? Or is he criminal that flies The living lustre of your eyes?" [Footnote 1: The gentleman who brought the message.--_Scott._] THE BIRTH OF MANLY VIRTUE INSCRIBED TO LORD CARTERET[1] 1724 Gratior et pulcro veniens in corpore virtus.--VIRG., _Aen._, v, 344. Once on a time, a righteous sage, Grieved with the vices of the age, Applied to Jove with fervent prayer-- "O Jove, if Virtue be so fair As it was deem'd in former days, By Plato and by Socrates, Whose beauties mortal eyes escape, Only for want of outward shape; Make then its real excellence, For once the theme of human sense; So shall the eye, by form confined, Direct and fix the wandering mind, And long-deluded mortals see, With rapture, what they used to flee!" Jove grants the prayer, gives Virtue birth, And bids him bless and mend the earth. Behold him blooming fresh and fair, Now made--ye gods--a son and heir; An heir: and, stranger yet to hear, An heir, an orphan of a peer;[2] But prodigies are wrought to prove Nothing impossible to Jove. Virtue was for this sex design'd, In mild reproof to womankind; In manly form to let them see The loveliness of modesty, The thousand decencies that shone With lessen'd lustre in their own; Which few had learn'd enough to prize, And some thought modish to despise. To make his merit more discern'd, He goes to school--he reads--is learn'd; Raised high above his birth, by knowledge, He shines distinguish'd in a college; Resolved nor honour, nor estate, Himself alone should make him great. Here soon for every art renown'd, His influence is diffused around; The inferior youth to learning led, Less to be famed than to be fed, Behold the glory he has won, And blush to see themselves outdone; And now, inflamed with rival rage, In scientific strife engage, Engage; and, in the glorious strife The arts new kindle into life. Here would our hero ever dwell, Fix'd in a lonely learned cell: Contented to be truly great, In Virtue's best beloved retreat; Contented he--but Fate ordains, He now shall shine in nobler scenes, Raised high, like some celestial fire,